1 000 turtles, symbolizing the war atrocities. The turtles were created unsung helmets from different war armies (German, Russian and American…). The turtle is the symbol of wisdom and humanity : It hibernates most of the year and comes out during the spring. The cycle sadly depicts the recurring suffering linked to the War.

François-Xavier Fabre, French painter of historical subjects born in 1766.

He was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and made his name by winning the Prix de Rome in 1787. During the French Revolution, he went to live in Florence, becoming a member of the Florentine Academy and a teacher of art.

He found an art school in his home town. On his own death, he bequeathed his own art collection to the town, forming the basis of the Musée Fabre.

Fabre began his training in the Montpellier's art academy, where he spent several years prior to joining Jacques-Louis David's studio in Paris. His studies were paid for by the financier and art collector, Philippe-Laurent de Joubert. Philippe-Laurent was the father of Laurent-Nicolas de Joubert. Fabre painted a portrait of Laurent-Nicolas de Joubert, which is now in the Getty Museum. He gained popularity in Florence. The city's Italian aristocrats and tourists were drawn to his elegance, realism, and precision of his portraits. This popularity earned Fabre a place in the Florentine Academy. He became an art teacher, art collector, and art dealer in Florence.

Ghasem Hajizadeh (قاسم حاجی‌زاده‎‎), Iranian-French painter and a pioneering Pop art figure in contemporary Iranian art. He was born in 1947 in Lahijan, north of Iran.

Forced into exile after the 1979 revolution, he currently lives in Paris.

He received his diploma in arts from Tehran High School of Fine Arts in 1967 and soon after started his art career. During his early years of work, Hajizadeh's works were mostly abstract. However, after contacts and friendship with Ardeshir Mohasses, he changed his style and concentrated on figurative art. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Mohasses encouraged him to pursue pop art movement, which was thriving in the United States. In 1972, Hajizadeh participated in the first art exhibition, held by Iran–America Society.

While he held several solo and group exhibitions inside and outside post-revolution Iran, after establishment of the Islamic Republic, he could no longer run any public exhibitions for his work. In 1986 he fled to France. During his career in arts, his works have been on shown on galleries and museum around the world, such as Tehran museum of contemporary art, Seoul museum of contemporary art, and Bangladesh national museum.

Józef Czapski (Józef Marian Franciszek hrabia Hutten-Czapski of Leliwa), Polish artist, author, and critic, as well as an officer of the Polish Army. He was born in Prague in 1896.

As a painter, he is notable for his membership in the Kapist movement, which was heavily influenced by Cézanne. Following the Polish Defensive War, he was made a prisoner of war by the Soviets and was among the very few officers to survive the Katyn massacre of 1940. Following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, he was an official envoy of the Polish government searching for the missing Polish officers in Russia. After World War II, he remained in exile in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, where he was among the founders of Kultura monthly, one of the most influential Polish cultural journals of the 20th century.

Leonardo Dudreville, Venetian-born (1885) Italian painter. He was one of the founders of the Nuove tendenze as well as of Novecento Italian art movements.

His family of Belgian origin soon moved to Milan where he studied at the Brera Academy in Milan from 1903 to 1905 and joined the Coenobium, a group of young artists belonging to the Scapigliatura movement, in Monza together with his friend Anselmo Bucci. After a stay in Paris (1906–07), his Divisionist style brought him into contact with Alberto Grubicy’s gallery. He adopted Futurism in 1912 and was one of the founders of Nuove Tendenze movement. In close contact with the critic Margherita Sarfatti in the years following World War I, he took part in the Venice Biennale (13th Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia) in 1922, and in the following year was one of the group of Sette pittori del Novecento who started the Novecento art movement exhibiting at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan. Relations between members of the Novecento movement were not always smooth, as shown by his participation in their first group exhibition in 1926 but not in the second in 1929. One of his works was bought in 1928 for the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, and his first solo exhibition was held in 1936 at the Milanese Galleria Dedalo. His style became increasingly meticulous with a wealth of detail. During World War II he withdrew to Ghiffa where he stayed until his death in 1975.

Jules Dupré, French painter born in 1811 in Nantes, one of the chief members of the Barbizon school of landscape painters. If Corot stands for the lyric and Rousseau for the epic aspect of the poetry of nature, Dupré is the exponent of his tragic and dramatic aspects.

He exhibited first at the Salon in 1831, and three years later was awarded a second-class medal. In the same year he came to England, where he was impressed by the genius of Constable. From then on he learned how to express movement in nature; and the districts around Southampton and Plymouth, with its wide, unbroken expanses of water, sky and ground, gave him good opportunities for studying the tempestuous motion of storm-clouds and the movement of foliage driven by the wind. He was named an Officer of the French Légion d'honneur in 1848.

Dupré's colour is sonorous and resonant. He showed preference for using dramatic sunset effects and stormy skies and seas as the subjects of his paintings. Late in life he changed his style and gained appreciably in largeness of handling and arrived at greater simplicity in his colour harmonies. Among his chief works are the Morning and Evening at the Louvre, and the early Crossing the Bridge in the Wallace Collection.

Gustave Moreau, French Symbolist painter born in 1826, whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.

His father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect, who recognized his talent. Moreau initially studied under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot and became a friend of Théodore Chassériau, whose work strongly influenced his own. Moreau had a 25-year personal relationship, possibly romantic, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux, a woman whom he drew several times. His first painting was a Pietà which is now located in the cathedral at Angoulême. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853. In 1853 he contributed Athenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition.

Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864. Moreau quickly gained a reputation for eccentricity. One commentator said Moreau's work was "like a pastiche of Mantegna created by a German student who relaxes from his painting by reading Schopenhauer". The painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Moreau became a professor at Paris' École des Beaux-Arts in 1891 and among his many students were fauvist painters Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. Jules Flandrin, Theodor Pallady and Léon Printemps also studied with Moreau.

During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings, many of which are on display in Paris' Musée national Gustave Moreau.

Rachid Khimoune, French sculptor born in Decazeville (France), in 1953, from Berber parents.

Graduated from the School of art of Paris in 1974, he first starts painting before choosing sculpture. In 1980 he wins the first prize of the «Foundation of France ».

Rachid Khimoune exhibits since 1975, and his works are in several museums, and public and private collections.

Pierre Restany, art critics, wrote in 1995:

“The mind took of all the potential visual from oral possibilities with no limits, and that eclecticism of Life is the expression of, without any sort of deceitful action, the universality of a language from personal shorthand of instinct.”

« To see what we can’t see anymore, to look from an other eye, in the magic and the dream » it is what makes all the poetry of his art.

From the “manhole cover”… to the old socket outlet, through the objects of a second hand, Rachid gives volume and life back to the insignificant.

Fritz Mackensen, German painterof the Düsseldorf school of painting and Art Nouveau, born in 1866.

He was a friend of Otto Modersohn and Hans am Ende, and was one of the co-founders of the artists' colony at Worpswede. In 1908 was named director of the School of Fine Arts in Weimar, who left in 1916. From 1933 to 1935 he was head of the Nordische Kunsthochschule in Bremen (today's University of the Arts Bremen).

Georges Jankelevitch, called Jeanclos, French sculptor born in 1933 in Paris.

After an apprenticeship in Cusset (Allier) with the sculptor Robert Mermet, in 1947 Jeanclos joined the National School of Fine Arts from 1952 to 1958.

He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1959, and lived four years at the Villa Medici led by Balthus. In 1960 he married Jacqueline Gateau with whom he had three children. He returned to Paris in 1964 and obtained a professorship at the School of Fine Arts of Le Mans from 1965 to 1966. He was appointed professor at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.

His work is precious and fragile, and the artist presented himself as influenced by Zen Buddhism.

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